Europe-wide education event with ESA astronaut Frank De Winne

ESA astronaut Frank De Winne has been living and working on the ISS since May

21 September 2009

A Europe-wide education event today links ESA astronaut Frank De Winne on the International Space Station with hundreds of schoolchildren in several European cities. In a live link-up with the ISS, De Winne will perform a simple experiment in space to demonstrate the effects of freefall.

The event is enabled by ESA's Directorate of Human Spaceflight and its Erasmus Centre and is co-hosted by four European science museums. The 'Take your classroom into space' event is one of several education activities planned during De Winne's ongoing six-month OasISS mission on the International Space Station (ISS).

Demonstrations

De Winne is part of a crew of six living on the ISS

De Winne will perform the curriculum-relevant demonstration inside the European Columbus laboratory using a standalone education kit. The experiment was selected from ideas proposed by European educators in response to a call for experiments that can be carried out on the ISS to demonstrate the effects of freefall.

Using the 'Take your classroom into space' Education Kit, which contains all the elements needed to perform the same demonstrations on the ground, secondary school students (14 to 18 years old) will compare their results with those obtained by De Winne in space, helping them to learn about the conditions of freefall.

During the live link-up with the Station, De Winne will also answer questions from the students.

Four European venues

De Winne will perform a demonstration live from the ISS

The event is co-hosted by four European science museums and centres located close to the home cities of the five teachers who proposed the winning 'Take your classroom into space' ideas. These venues are amongst the best-known and most active museums and science centres in Europe. With thousands of visitors every year, they offer innovative didactical exhibits for teachers and schools.

The locations and venues of the 'Take your classroom into space' event are:

CosmoCaixa, Barcelona, Spain

NOESIS, Thessaloniki, Greece

Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, Milan, Italy

Technopolis®, Mechelen, Belgium

Each venue hosts some 200 secondary school students, their teachers and local authority representatives. The four sites will be interconnected for the duration of a three-hour programme that features videos, hands-on activities, a space-show, a lecture from a space expert, a game and the live call with De Winne.